News from HMRC

Bad tax advice – don’t get caught out by tax avoidance 

HMRC’s ‘don’t get caught out’ campaign can help people working as contractors to steer clear of bad tax advice by spotting the telltale signs of tax avoidance.

Anyone working as a contractor can find out more about tax avoidance from our online guidance and guides, interactive tools, short video and personal stories.

They can also find out how to leave and report a tax avoidance scheme to HMRC, and settle their tax affairs in an affordable and timely way.

A list of named tax avoidance schemes is also published. This is not a complete list. Contrary to what some promoters tell prospective clients, HMRC never approves tax avoidance schemes.

Nine million pensioners to benefit from a Winter Fuel Payment this winter

On 9 June the government announced that, from this winter, everyone over the state pension age in England and Wales with an income of or below £35,000 will benefit from a Winter Fuel Payment. This extends eligibility to over three quarters of pensioners in England and Wales, with around nine million benefitting.

The payment will be made automatically and pensioners will not be asked to supply their payment details. No one will need to register with HMRC for this or take any further action.

Pensioners above the £35,000 threshold will have the full amount of the Winter Fuel Payment they receive automatically collected via PAYE, or via their Self-Assessment return for the minority who already complete one.

Pensioners who want to opt out and not receive the payment at all will be able to do so, via the Department for Work and Pensions. More guidance is available at GOV.UK.

UK families can boost their finances with childcare savings

Nearly 826,000 working families across the UK received a total of £632.2 million in government top-ups through Tax-Free Childcare in the 2024–2025 tax year. The scheme helps families save up to £2,000 annually for each child up to the age of 11 — or £4,000 for a disabled child up to the age of 16 — towards childcare costs.

HMRC is urging families to sign up now to ease the cost of summer childcare. Latest figures from HMRC show that in March 2025, more than 579,000 families used the scheme—an increase of nearly 82,000 from the previous year.

For every £8 paid into a Tax-Free Childcare account, the government adds £2. Funds can be used to pay for any approved childcare including nurseries, after-school clubs, and holiday childcare.

Families may qualify if they:

Visit GOV.UK to check eligibility and register.

Paying PAYE and VAT bill by Direct Debit

Businesses and employers can make PAYE or VAT payments simpler by signing up to pay by direct debit.

Direct debit is the most accurate way to pay PAYE and VAT tax bills, reducing the burden of having to remember to make the payment, work out what’s due or miss a payment deadline.

Payments are automatically collected from bank accounts based on the information provided in a:

Publications

2023-2024 Tax gap report 

HMRC has published its tax gap calculations for 2023 to 2024. The tax gap for 2023 to 2024 is estimated at 5.3% meaning that HMRC collected 94.7% of all tax due. Small businesses account for 60% of the gap, with Corporation Tax making up 40%.

The most common behaviours contributing to the tax gap are failure to take reasonable care (31%), error (15%), and evasion (14%). HMRC is receiving funding to help close the tax gap and increase yield by £7.5 billion a year by 2029 to 2030, including by funding an additional 5,500 compliance and 2,400 debt management staff – to ensure more of the tax due is paid, to fund public services.

Carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM): consultation closure reminder  

A reminder for affected importers and producers that, ahead of the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) coming into effect on 1 January 2027, there is still an opportunity to contribute to the technical consultation which seeks to ensure that the primary legislation meets the policy intent.

Feedback should be sent by email to cbampolicyteam@hmrc.gov.uk by 11:59pm on 3 July 2025.

June events

Tax Technology Conference, Birmingham

Craig Ogilvie, Director of Making Tax Digital joined a panel in the morning to provide an update on HMRC’s transformation programme including digitalisation, AI and MTD. Anna Kwiatkowska, Deputy Director Data Science and Chief Data Scientist at HMRC joined a panel to explore ethical considerations when businesses are adopting AI. Anna also delivered an AI-themed interactive breakout session with her colleague Nicola Smith, Innovation and AI Lead.

Delegates visited the HMRC exhibition stand to chat to our panellists and the MTD team, generating lots of interesting conversations and healthy debate.

July 2025 diary dates 

Here’s where you’ll find HMRC and our representatives in July.

1 July, Dragons’ Den Event, London

HMRC is running a “Dragons’ Den” style event in partnership with the Institute of Customer Services (ICS) on Tuesday 1 July. HMRC will present a series of problem statements to external organisations at the event. The aim of doing so is to seek private sector expertise in producing novel thinking when applied to issues affecting HMRC, but which are not organisationally exclusive.

Many of the issues are focused on culture and how things are done, and how that affects our customers and staff. We are looking at ways to get people’s ‘buy-in’ during periods of change in an increasingly digital environment. There will be around 6-8 organisations attending, all working together to provide solutions to some of the issues on the day. Those solutions will then be presented to a group of “Dragons” that will include senior leaders from both HMRC and ICS.